In 1945, with the Allies closing in on all sides and the regime crumbling, leaders of the Third Reich accelerated the Holocaust, assigning trains that could have been used for the war effort to carry tens of thousands of Jews to their deaths. Dying regimes, you see, have their priorities.
At Tuesday's debate, neither candidate dared to suggest that getting out of Iraq might help alleviate our current financial difficulties.
Ted, I'm not quite sure that the narrative is directly related to the content of the cartoon. I do know that you're most likely to get kicked by a horse when you're taking the tack off back in the barn.
ReplyDeleteThe Republicans have walked away from Michigan. Florida moved out of reach when it came out that McCain intends to pay for health care by slashing Medicare and Medicaid. It's over, barring an October surprise that staggers the imagination.
So, what's the point of the new surge of mudslinging, half-truths, and smears? I don't think it is about the Presidency any more.
In the primaries, Obama made the Republicans nervous; he's a formidable opponent. But they've had formidable opponents before.
Clinton worried them more, of course, but their media basically killed her chances.
What really, really scared them? Huckabee.
A Re-bubba-can candidate? Now, that's a threat. The Re-bubba-cans are just supposed to beat the drum on wedge issues and vote. The Re-club-licans are supposed to run the party.
They can't let the Re-bubba-cans get in charge of the Party -- they outnumber the Re-club-licans. And they can't let the Re-bubba-cans know that they're just cannon fodder. What to do, what to do?
They can't pass McCain off as a Good Old Boy -- even Bubba thinks for himself more than that. Hence Sarah "Noocyooler? You Betcha" Palin. The Re-bubba-cans have a figurehead to watch. That ought to keep 'em down on the farm. Even in 2012.
McCain could excuse the dishonorable smears and mudslinging to himself as "politics as usual" back when he had some chance of winning the Presidency. Now he might think that the only thing worse than prostituting yourself is doing it with the knowledge that you're not going to get paid! So, he played it pretty straight on Tuesday.
Palin, on the other hand, seems to revel in the mud. As far as I can see, she is absolutely without a conscience in that regard.
So, for the duration of the campaign, she can keep Bubba from thinking about who sold him down the river for the last 12 years. They might save a few Congressional seats that way, and the Re-club-licans have a tame Re-bubba-can all lined up to keep Bubba from getting ideas in 2012.
At Tuesday's debate, neither candidate dared to suggest that getting out of Iraq might help alleviate our current financial difficulties.
ReplyDeleteObama has nothing to gain by introducing new material at this point. He's smart to just sit on his lead and let his opponent take all the risks.
McCain, of course, knows that Iraq can't be over. Have we seen ticker-tape parades? I don't think so.
Besides, he can't admit that we had no avowable objectives in Iraq. Even Joe Six-pack is bound to start thinking that we couldn't achieve them if we didn't even know what they were.
Read your Robbie Kaplan, Ted. The Greeks may insist on how much they hated Nazi Occupation, along with the rest of Europe, but they're really happy Salonika is Jew-Free.
ReplyDeleteIt's a sad hypocrisy.
"Ted, why do you hate The Troops?"
ReplyDelete"Ted, why do you hate America?"
"Ted, why do you hate Freedom?"
Did I forget one?
Oh yes:
"Ted, why do you hate kittens?"
And now: Comments not parroting this post :p
I think this cartoon will stay in world history. Not too many people will understand it, at least not without foreword.
ReplyDeleteI am from Europe; and I am simply stunned.
You have expressed EVERYTHING wrong about USA in one simple cartoon.
Incredible.
"The Last American Job"
ReplyDeleteGood God, yes.
This says it all.
Tell the truth, Ted.
Amen.
Actually Obama did tie the war cost to the need to help the economic crisis. Here's some cut-and-pasted debate transcript, Obama speaking:
ReplyDelete"That was the wrong judgment, and it's been costly to us. So one of the difficulties with Iraq is that it has put an enormous strain, first of all, on our troops, obviously, and they have performed heroically and honorably and we owe them an extraordinary debt of gratitude.
But it's also put an enormous strain on our budget. We've spent, so far, close to $700 billion and if we continue on the path that we're on, as Senator McCain is suggesting, it's going to go well over $1 trillion.
We're spending $10 billion a month in Iraq at a time when the Iraqis have a $79 billion surplus, $79 billion.
And we need that $10 billion a month here in the United States to put people back to work, to do all these wonderful things that Senator McCain suggested we should be doing, but has not yet explained how he would pay for."
Anon #1, I really like the analysis. As for Palin reveling in the mud, pigs are happiest in the mud.
ReplyDeleteShe really is a petty, cruel, high school beauty queen. That's who she is. That's the type of person, as Robert Cohen eloquently put it, who refuses to talk to Spain because 'you're either with us or against us.' It's adolescent, and it takes economic disaster to demonstrate that to people enough that they vote for the adult.
Palin became the person she was happy with before she achieved maturity. She will always be nothing more than who she was in high school....and a lot of people in this country relate to that.
I'm not THAT much younger than her, and I'm still not the person I want to be
Anon 1:25AM,
ReplyDelete"Florida moved out of reach when it came out that McCain intends to pay for health care by slashing Medicare and Medicaid."
By cut Medicare, do you mean he's actually going to reign in part A?
Part A is the main reason hospitals get to charge $800 for a bag of saline and $10 for a cotton ball. No one wants to fix this because hospitals are usually prominent parts of the political machines that back congressmen.
The prescription drug benefit is also asinine. It created a whole industry of middlemen who peddle drugs to plan members at inflated prices.
Hell, if McCain has the cajones to actually cut the waste in Medicare, I'd vote for him. Unfortunately, his testicles are probably in a jar of formaldehyde in Hanoi, next to his brain.